By Emily Glazer And Rachel Louise Ensign
New York State Superintendent of Financial Services Benjamin
Lawsky said evaluations of electronic trading may hold up
foreign-exchange settlements for certain banks.
Mr. Lawsky, speaking at a Dow Jones risk and compliance
conference Tuesday, said it could take the Department of Financial
Services months to finish the electronic-trading focus on Barclays
PLC and Deutsche Bank AG.
Mr. Lawsky said it may be worthwhile to carve electronic trading
out of the foreign-exchange settlements for his portion of the
negotiations with those banks.
Several banks have negotiated for months over alleged
manipulation of currencies. This isn't the first time Mr. Lawsky's
agency, the Deparment of Financial Services, had held up Barclays'
settlement, people familiar with the matter have said.
Barclays wasn't included in a November settlement with several
regulators and banks. The Justice Department is still in talks on
settlements with several banks.
A Deutsche Bank spokeswoman declined to comment on matters
relating to the Department of Financial Services. "Deutsche Bank
has received requests for information from regulatory authorities
that are investigating trading in the foreign exchange market. The
bank is cooperating with those investigations," the spokeswoman
added. Barclays didn't immediately respond to a request for
comment.
The Department of Financial Services put monitors in Barclays
and Deutsche Bank months ago and found the bulk of trading is done
electronically.
"I don't think DFS is in a position to settle these matters
until it is done with electronic trading or if electronic trading
was carved out of settlements," Mr. Lawsky said. "Active monitors
are in there right now, there's a lot of data."
He said he hopes the settlements will occur this year.
Write to Emily Glazer at emily.glazer@wsj.com and Rachel Louise
Ensign at rachel.ensign@wsj.com
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